


Four Words

by classiqfemme



Category: Necessary Roughness
Genre: F/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classiqfemme/pseuds/classiqfemme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico can't say it all in four words no matter how much he tries. Careles still thinks of the past. Dani makes him ache for something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Words

                Careles isn’t one to pretend that love is kind, gentle, or patient.  Nico knows love as blurred lines of lipstick against his shirt. The mother leaves a blood red trail, the daughter’s smiles shimmer pink where she falls against him. He cleans up the evidence they leave behind and learns to wear black.

                He remembers his unit; remembers the bond that pulled Davidson in front of a bullet meant for Harris and then Shu in front of a knife meant for a wounded Matthews. He knows that kind of love well enough to bear the scars meant for Pittman. He knows that only cremation erased the wounds left on Waters. Careles aches without them, has a drawer full of their medals, walks the path between their graves when he can.  That was years ago.

                He can’t stop thinking this way. He is Careles, not Nico.  Pittman is Pittman until he isn’t. Waters is always Waters, no matter how kind Peter was when blood warmed skin or how brave when it warmed earth.  Four words sentences say it all.

                Careles knows the push and pull of drugs the way he knows the tides of hunger. Wait twenty minutes, they say. Twenty minutes and the stomach will forget its emptiness. Drink water, chew gum (He can’t help but laugh when he finds this bookmarked on Juliette’s computer. There was no gum, no water in Somalia. Twenty minutes lasts hours. The salt rush of blood from a missing tooth was dangerously sweet). He knows how shivers pervert the long lines of gym-crafted muscles and how vomit hitting tile can be the highlight of his day. He knows how to crave Aspirin but flinch away from morphine. Amphetamines burn bright behind his eyes and his mind fights the sigh of beta-blockers.  Wait out the burn. Focus your eyes. Unbind your wrists and fight. Juliette craves the needle but settles for a bottle. Gabrielle powders her nose and empties pharmacies.

                Nico is allergic to sulfas.  Careles won’t talk about ketamine. He is careful with alcohol.

                T.K. is on a bender and Nico is in the backseat of a commercial helicopter watching the team therapist gape at the cityscape. For the first time he doesn’t fly with the memory of Nicaragua’s evac souring his tongue. He takes the extra time to think about Terrence, the little orphan boy who became a man somewhere between eking into college and his rookie year. Nico knows help as bootcamp and SEAL training. He knows he could bend Terrence into something else but god save him, he likes T.K.. The doctor hasn’t washed off the previous day’s makeup but looks lovely just the same. Somewhere below him his best man is tip-toeing through a house and for once that doesn’t mean blood. Careles doesn’t know what that means. There’s a steel edge to the doctor’s smirk. Careles thinks of the Pittmans but Nico can’t think at all. He tries to make it simple, make it four words, but his fingers pick chords into his seatbelt instead. 

                The Pittman Group starts shoveling athletes to Dr. Santino’s door. He watches her and wonders. Careles trades dollar bills for an offer of friendship.  Nico doesn’t sleep well that night and tells himself the burn in his chest is from an old wound, strong whiskey, or black coffee. He pours himself a drink to make it true.

                Gabrielle doesn’t love him. Juliette isn’t his daughter. They found Marshall’s body. Four words and it still doesn’t make sense.

                Dani is crying into a fish bowl. She holds him and closes the space between them. They reach the stairs and Nico begins to ask himself if this is a good idea. They’re halfway up before Ray calls from jail. Nico tries not to smart at how he’s left leaning against an old picture of her daughter. Family trumps all, and he’d do the same for Juliette. He chooses to pick up his guitar rather than go to bed. He goes through every song he knows and tries to remember the last time he played to anything other than an echo.

                He knows Dani doesn’t love him. He knows long before she pauses, but it still aches that she wouldn’t tell him to stay. The team won’t miss him. The team doesn’t know him, though T.K. is getting closer each day. He wants someone to know him as Nico and love him without shame, or fear, or a bullet to the gut that—dammit, Peter. He can’t blame it on the alcohol this time. Not on the coffee, not on the white line that transects his chest, not on the curry he ate last week… She doesn’t love him.

                He trades himself to Texas and finds himself drafted into the government. The wire taps were a risk and he’ll take the consequences, kiss the ass of another commanding officer, work without pay… it doesn’t matter because Santino is safe. Dr. Santino is with the Hawks, with the man she loves, with her family, and nowhere near V3. Except she isn’t, and it takes Nico less than three weeks to hear about Matt eloping with the mother of his child. Juliette calls him at three in the morning, drunk on champagne and muttering complaints about Ray Jay. Nico knows enough about the coping habits of teenage girls to figure out the rest. He tells himself it’s none of his business and works his way into V3’s circle of trust. By the time he gets the call forcing him to recruit Dr. Santino into the fold every executive assistant and senior agent owes him a favor. He tells Paloma a friend is coming and she takes the hint, staking her claim as soon as the doctor walks through the door (he calls his former CO and arranges leave for her sister. It’s the least he could do).  Dani doesn’t know what to make of her and Paloma has his number on speed-dial before 911 or her mother.

                Santino slaps him. She isn’t a Pittman and this is a pain he prefers, though that night he asks his bourbon if she was Dr. Santino or Dani when she acted. He could live with both but… he hopes.

                Nico smiles when he hears T.K. calling for him. There’s a dangerous moment when he feels at home. He wonders how Paloma is taking the Terrence King Experience and if Dani is smiling into her coffee. He rolls his eyes and asks the ceiling to tell him when T.K.’s antics began to feel like home. T.K. laughs his real laugh and hugs him close. He’s been in government work too long.

                (Dani doesn’t trust him. Dr. Santino does. Both will giggle when they dance with Connor McClane. Nico Careles will watch them. He will protect her.)

 

 


End file.
